BrightPay and Sage are two of the most widely used payroll packages in Ireland and the UK. Both produce a PDF payslip per employee per period, but they group the same information differently.
BrightPay layout
- Payments listed top-left, deductions top-right.
- PRSI class and insurable weeks shown near the employee details block.
- Cumulative (YTD) figures usually run along the bottom band.
Sage layout
- Payments and deductions stacked in a single two-column table.
- Separate "This period" and "Year to date" columns for each element.
- Employer pension and NI/PRSI cost often shown as a footnote line.
What to check in either
- Hours × rate matches the basic pay line.
- Overtime is on its own line, not folded into basic.
- Payments − deductions equals net pay to the cent.
- YTD figures increase from the previous period by exactly this period's amount.
Doing it automatically
MySalaryPal reads the PDF your employer already produces — you don't change payroll software. It learns each employer's layout after the first upload, extracts every line, balances the maths, and flags anything that doesn't reconcile before you have to ask.